


Come Find Me

by Mochirimi



Series: Bederia Week 2020 [3]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Bederia Week, Day Five, Dressed in Pink Shipping, F/M, bederia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22929517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mochirimi/pseuds/Mochirimi
Summary: When Bede dreams for the first time in weeks, he dreams of her.Feb 26 | Day 5: Soulmates AU
Relationships: Beet | Bede/Yuuri | Gloria
Series: Bederia Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642840
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	Come Find Me

**Author's Note:**

> Everything is out of order. Everything is chaos.  
> And I'm lost in my feelings.  
> But at least my recent time in hospitals are good for something.

Afternoon light glows sepia in Hammerlocke. It’s the way sunlight waltzes with the cogs of an ever-turning city, the way smog brushes brown and black watercolor across a once cerulean sky. From his seat by the window, Bede surveys the city, the way it separates into layers, the gradient of monochromatic colors from ground to sky a clear sign of pollution, of dirt. 

“Glaring at it isn’t going to make it any better you know.” The old woman cackles from her hospital bed, the laugh throaty and vibrant before it’s cut, strangled, destroyed, losing air and energy to her age, to her sickness. 

Five years in her company is not enough.

“And you acting like you’re sixteen isn’t going to make you any better any faster.” Her protégé shoots back. His eyes barely settle on her withered frame propped up against hospital issue pillows before they’re brought back to the view from the window. 

The outline of his reflection greets him, the changing light of the afternoon turning a window into a mirror. And he looks tired. Violet eyes are rimmed in circles of lilac and lavender, his face a bit gaunt. He’s reminded how little sleep he gets nowadays. 

“I’m as young as I feel.” The old woman waves off his concern from her hospice throne. Her voice is gravel across IV lines and crossed wires at her bloodline. 

They spit and spat less now, Bede swallowing the peach pit of argument and objection for her sake as much as his. There is no point in getting wound up when his words of concern, barbed to stick roll off her unconcerned shoulders like water down a cold glass. The conversation is better off ended.

“Of course you are.” Bede punctuates the conversation with the pull of her blanket, tucking in the corners around her fragile frame. “But for now, I think it’s best you rest.”

__________________________

Bede hates hospitals. And he hates the one in Hammerlocke even more.

It’s the way the building spreads and constricts, the way every hallway is met with a closed door, a dead end, and death. The place is clinical, detached and he cannot rail against the sterile nature of disimpassioned doctors whose eyes cast only an ounce of sympathy when they speak to him. When they talk with her. Everyone is the same here, pretending bad news can be sweetened by a plastic smile and honey-chilled words. 

Pretending. In his time here with Opal, he’s seen the truth, the way people stumble in the illusion of “at least now we know.” Despite their best efforts to believe it, that it’s better to know than it is to continue with the belief everything is fine, they are weighed down with words as heavy as stone, the impact of a poor diagnosis. 

Because ignorance is bliss. 

Bede hates hospitals. So when he dreams for the first time in weeks, he doesn’t understand why his unconscious brings him here. Of all places. 

When he opens his eyes, and his vision corrects, Bede knows he’s dreaming. He just doesn’t understand why it’s this. He’s in some unknown part of the hospital’s labyrinth where ghosts and shadows pass without discernible faces. Each waif moves slowly across the tiles, some with canes and comrades pulling them encouraging with warbled echoes of _you’re doing great._ Because that’s how everyone here lies. 

Everything is bathed in similar shades of white, the washed out versions of their real-life counterparts. Bede traces his fingers across the worn wallpaper. And somehow this feels more honest. Unlike the hospital he treks through, these walls hold no pretense, nothing that screams, _Things will get better!_ Rather, the lack of color whispers, tentatively shuffles its feet and mumbles, _It is what it is…_ Somehow that’s better.

And better yet, outside the windows, Hammerlocke doesn’t exist. 

Bede’s footsteps echo and reverberate against the glossy white tile as he walks. There is nothing particularly interesting about this dream. Nothing that is, except the hundreds of strands of red running like a current just above his head. 

Each made of a different material, silk, yarn, thread and indiscernible materials he doesn’t have the name for, wrap and tangle in long lines down the hallway, some pulled taught and thin, ready to snap if pulled just a little too hard, while some run slack, just within reach of his thin fingers. 

As he turns a corner, Bede reaches for one that hangs low. The crimson silk strand sighs with his touch, glowing bright and hot under his fingertips. The contact is warm, the feeling of someone placing a delicate hand in his. The sound of a breeze dancing through fields of long grass roar in his ears, and the sound of someone’s laughter above the trill of “I love you” hits him like the vision of a graceless smile. 

It hurts and he repels from the dull ache of his stone heart plummeting into cold waters. 

Bede pulls back like he’s been burned. 

But then he remembers, the disinfected oxygen of the hospital filling his lungs, cold and bracing. He is grounded to his place, solid in the reminder this is a dream. This is _his_ dream and he is in control.

“It’s a bit shocking the first time, isn’t it?”

The question resonates against the walls, bouncing across corners as it leaves the lips of a girl to curl up against his ear.

Honey brown eyes meet his as she stares at him openly from her spot less than five feet away. Small hands rest upon the ledge of the window, supporting a petite frame clothed in pale pink scrubs and bare feet. Rosy red cheeks are framed by a sheer cut bob, unstylish and barely kept and contained as it kisses the edge of her jawline. She is color against gray scale.

And Bede wonders how he never noticed her before.

Shades and shadows walk unbothered by their presence down the hall, lost in their own stories. And Bede opens his mouth to speak and closes it again, shaking his head and sighing through his teeth as he continues his walk down the hospital halls.  
Bede hates hospitals. So, when he dreams for the first time in weeks, he doesn’t understand how or _why_ his subconscious weaved a woman out of broken, dismissive memories trashed in the annals of his mind.

When would this dream end?

An impact. A small burst of pain in the middle of his back knocks the air out if his lungs and he hits the floor coughing. The ground is cold under his palms, the tile grout dipping into the grooves of his fingertips. Air comes in and out in small bursts as he searches what put him on the ground in the first place.

Standing above him, her arms crossed is the figment of his imagination. Indignation twists her lips as she looks down at him, her bare foot tapping the ground in impatience.

“It’s rude to ignore someone who’s speaking to you.” She says it like it’s a reason, a _legitimate_ reason to kick someone in the back, to have them coughing and sputtering on the ground in front of her.

“You’re not even real!” He hisses back.

Her expression changes, like gray clouds gliding across an azure sky. The rain and storm are so sure right up until the point it’s not. The dark clouds roll across her eyes, turning honey-glazed eyes the shade of burned sugar for the briefest moment, when it lifts, light and amber once again. Irritation shifts to surprise, curiosity at his words.

“I’m as real as you are.” She responds simply.

He rises to his feet, able to look down at her as he sneers. “This is my dream and you’re just a figment in it.”

Her hands twist behind her back as she considers this. “How do you know it’s a dream?”

Bede arches an eyebrow. Frowns. “If this isn’t a dream, then what is it?” 

Her eyes glance upwards to the crimson strands above their heads, to the way some shift and swing with an unknown breeze. “Maybe it’s like a stream of consciousness.” Her bare feet push against the ground, toes poised and feet arched as she reaches for one hanging low. Her fingertips barely graze its surface, the light moves with them, dancing right to the edge of the material. 

The reaction is clear on her face. It’s in the smile, the way her eyes close and her body revels and comes alive in the moment, the tune of electricity running from the tips her fingers down to the tips of her toes. When she opens her eyes, her brown eyes sparkle with new energy, a new knowledge he has no privy to. 

“What are those?” The words tumble from his lips, unreserved, unrestrained in the simple desire _to know_.

She hums, the words coming out like the syncopated beats of a heart. “I don’t know. But sometimes they tell a story.” Her eyes settle on his own. “You never answered my question, you know. What did you feel, when you held one in your hand?”  
“Nothing.” He lies. 

She laughs, and the sound trills, the echo of it harmonizes with the sound. Just like when his hand brushed against the crimson ribbon. “You’re such a liar.”

Cold invisible fingers run down his back and Bede shivers. 

He needs to wake up. Now. 

His eyes glance this way and that for a stage left, a bright neon exit sign towards consciousness, towards the real world. He’s tired of these games, this bizarre space, this figment of a girl that _just didn’t exist._

The hallway they stand in, the one just around the corner are standstill copies of one another, with different shadows, different slips and slopes of red threads following an invisible current. And not a single exit to be seen. 

His figment follows him as he moves, skitters and dances every which way as she talks. “My name is Gloria by the way. Not that you asked.”

His answers are curt. “I don’t care. You don’t exist.”

She rolls her eyes. “You keep saying that, but I’m the only one else here and I can tell you this place is _very_ real.”

“This is just a dream. This is _my_ dream and I’m telling you this is all fake.” A doorknob wobbles in his hand, and he is sure it’s about to give way, open a door, a way out of this nightmare. But it resists, refuses him and he curses under his breath.   
Gloria leans against a window’s ledge, small hands supporting a petite frame as she studies him. Bede feels the warmth of her eyes trained on the curve of his face, the way his hand grips the doorknob, the white of his knuckles. 

“Do you really want to get out of here that badly?” Curiosity curves in the silver and brass of her voice. The bell cracks. 

“Of course.” He snaps. “I just don’t understand why I haven’t woken up yet.” Frustration seeps like sap from his words. 

“What if I told you…” Gloria’s sentence trails as she bites her bottom lip turning the rosebud color a deeper shade of pink. “What if I told you I know the way out.”

Bede straightens, his violet eyes snapping to attention. His words were careful, slow and deliberate as attempts to keep his voice steady. “Why wouldn’t you tell me if you knew?” 

She shrugs, pushing off the window ledge with a small sigh and a small bounce on her heel to punctuate the action. “Sue me. I was bored and you’re the first person I’ve seen in ages.”

“How do I wake up then, if you know.” 

What comes next is a surprise. Standing on her tiptoes, Gloria places one and then a second hand on each of his shoulders. Her grip is firm as she looks at him. Her eyes are hard, stone and flint without the spark to light the fire. Her fingers are cold, colder than he expected, but when he looks upon her clearly, she’s different, life seeping off her in sacrifice of the solemn shadow sheer across her complexion. Her color is faded. 

The pink and chocolate are barely discernible under grey.

“Are you sure you want this?” Her words caress his face.

He nods in response. Mute upon her transformation.

The action is immediate. The force is sudden, rough as the petite girl shoves him back and away. He stumbles. And falls. The window ledge bends him at the knees and he’s freefalling backwards to a window that gives way to his weight.  
Outside the window, Hammerlocke doesn’t exist.

There is nothing. 

Bede falls into darkness devoid of any light, any color. Anything at all but the image of a girl in pink looking down at him from a floating window.

__________________________

Bede wakes with a gasp and a bluster not his own.

From her bed, Opal covers her mouth, muffles the shallow desperate intake of air into tired lungs. Monitors above her head flash and blink. Dull and muted in the sound. As if the concern for her lack of oxygen, her lack of a strong heartbeat is cared for only in half-measures. 

From his corner, Bede rises, holds the brittle frame of his guardian as she scrapes for the life.

Whether dreaming or awake, Bede hates hospitals. And he hates the one in Hammerlocke even more.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read!  
> Come yell at me about Bederia at the following accounts:  
> Find me at the following to scream your Bederia feelings:  
> [tumblr](mochirimi.tumblr.com)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mochirimi)


End file.
